Medical ethics and the climate change emergency

The editors of the Journal of Medical Ethics support the call of the UK Health Alliance on Climate for urgent action to ensure that the current Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ‘finally delivers climate justice for Africa and vulnerable countries’.1 As they note ‘Africa has suffered disproportionately although it has done little to cause the crisis’.

The burden of climate change has thus far fallen disproportionately on Global South countries. The monsoon in Pakistan this year killed over 1100 people and the public health implications of the flooding might affect the health of over 5 million people.2 The South Asian monsoon impacts the lives of a billion people and the flooding associated with wet seasons is likely to occur eight times more frequently in future years than at present.3

For many pacific islands such as Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu, increasing sea levels mean the inhabitants could in effect become refugees …

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